Scottish secondary schools and their links with developing countries: study

Appendix III – Methodology

This research included several elements:

• Literature Review
• Document Analysis
• School-list
• Interviews

The methodology of each element will be discussed below.

Literature Review

For the literature review, presented in chapter 2, the starting point has been Wearnig and McGehee’s (2013) comprehensive review on volunteer tourism. Moreover a Google Scholar search on “Volunteer Tourism”, “Voluntourism” and “Educational Tourism” was conducted. For more specific case studies on Scottish and UK school partnership programmes the database of the Development Education Research Centre was used as a starting point. In total 25 articles and research reports were reviewed, of which the literature gives an overview of the most relevant ones, answering the first research question: “What potential benefits and disadvantages are linked to school partnership according to current academic literature?”

Document analysis

To answer the second research question, “Which organisations and resources do Scottish secondary school have available to them, and what kind of activities are they promoting?”, organisations linked to Scottish school partnerships and school exchanges were identified and contacted for a provide information on their activities and ideas on partnerships. The websites of each organisation was browsed through and documents linked to school partnerships were downloaded and analysed, of which the results are presented in chapter 4. The documents were analysed on their descriptions of a partnership, what the aims should be, and on their advice for teachers how to start and maintain one. Moreover, specific mentions of school trips or exchanges were highlighted and compared.

School-list

The literature review revealed that there was little empirical data on Scottish schools and their partnerships with developing countries, both quantitative and qualitative. To gather some qualitative insights interviews were conducted, which are discussed in the next section. To gain more quantitative insight a list was compiled of Scottish secondary schools with a link to a developing country. As a questionnaire was advised against, the list was compiled of several different sources. The Scotland-Malawi partnership (SMP) provided a list with all the secondary schools that had established a partnership with a school in Malawi, with the help of SMP. The British Council provided a list with all secondary schools involved in the current Connecting Classrooms programme, as well as schools participating in the previous two programmes. Glasgow council and Malawi Leaders of Learning (MLOL) provided a list of schools connected to the MLOL programme and of schools that had been on a trip in 2019. Signpost International, ScotDEC, McConnell International Foundation, Orbis, One World centre Dundee and Highland One world Centre all also provided names of schools of which they were aware that had a partnership with, or made trips to developing countries.

The researcher sub sequentially visited the websites, Facebook pages and twitter accounts of all of these schools to get a confirmation of the partnership. While not all schools mention their partnership on their website, some schools did, and other had blogs on the trips that they had made. This lead to a list of 82 secondary schools that have a partnership with a school in a developing country or have made a trip there. Chapter four gives an overview of the numbers.

While this is number of 82 schools cannot be said to be representative, and does not include all Scottish schools, it does show that partnerships are a substantial activity in the Scottish secondary school programme. The 82 schools are likely to be an underestimation, as the research has shown that schools often come in contact with partner schools through personal channels, and not necessarily link to the organisations which provided the information for the list.

Interviews

The three remaining research questions focus on the experiences of teachers, their motivation to start a partnership, the opportunities and difficulties they encounter and the way they link it to global citizenship learning. To gather this information, six teachers and one council officer were interviewed on the practices in seven different secondary schools.

Initially a selection of schools from the school-partnership list was made. This selection included schools across the country, with different types of strategies to the partnership, different organisations involved and different lengths of the partnership. Ten schools were contacted, either through their own website, or through the SMP. Of these initial ten schools, six responded and five were able to participate in the interview. Through the Highland One World centre four more schools were contacted, of which one participated in the interview. Through Scotdec the seventh school was contacted.

The limited time-frame did not allow for another round of recruitment, and reviewing the seven schools that took part some limitations should be made clear. Even though initially the ten schools that were contacted were diverse in the kind of partnership and approach to school trips, the seven that were interviewed did not cover the whole spectrum. Four of the seven schools were very active schools, either through the SMP or connecting classrooms and were strongly involved in activities linked to these programmes. This might be an overrepresentation, although two of the other interviews do include a school partnership that were less active.

Only one of the schools interviewed was linked to the Vinetrust, and no schools that were interviewed were linked to Classrooms for Malawi, both of which are important players in organising secondary school trips.

Lastly, no school from the Glasgow area was included. This is a shortcoming as the council support and the Malawi Leaders for Learning programme would have provided a slightly different context for the schools in Glasgow, compared to other areas. Although Glasgow is not included, the seven selected schools do spread across the country, with three from the Edinburgh area, two from the Highlands, one on Shetland and one from the North-East.

Overall, the interviews give a first overview of the different approaches schools can take to partnerships, trips and global learning, but cannot generalise on overall pathways or outputs of school partnerships.

The interviews conducted with the seven schools were semi-structured, following four themes:

1. Process of establishing a partnership;

2. The activities involved in the partnership – specifically school trips;

3. The integration in the school and community; and

4. The future of the partnership (see appendix III for the full interview guide).

The first three interviews were recorded and then summarized. However, as transcription proved to be rather time consuming, the other four interviews were not recorded, but notes were taken, which were summarized afterwards.

The summarized interviews were firstly analysed by addressing two research questions:

• what activities are the schools involved in
• what was the motivation of the school/teacher to enter the partnership (and organise the activities)

This was followed by a narrative analysis to understand how teachers spoke about partnership cooperation, development project and global citizenship. Finally the data was coded on the topics that arose from the literature and partnership guides review: communication and co-development and integration in the curriculum and wider community.

Questionnaire

Following the literature review and conversations with organisations involved in partnership and volunteer activities, a gap in our empirical knowledge was identified. While there is some information on what Scottish schools are doing, and the partnerships they establish, there is actually very little known about the partner school’s perspective. In consultation with the International Development team a questionnaire was established, to be sent to the Malawian schools that partner with a Scottish secondary school.

The aim of the questionnaire was to cover similar questions as asked in the interviews, specifically those questions focused on the process of developing the partnership, and whether expectations are met. Moreover, some of the questions focus on the motivation and rationale of the Malawian partner schools to establish a partnership. This will give us insight on the reciprocity of the project from the partner school’s perspective and can test whether partner schools have a similar idea of a partnerships as the Scottish schools. The full questionnaire can be found in Appendix V.

To reach as many schools as possible, a list of all Malawian schools known to the researcher to have a link with a Scottish secondary school was generated. This list was sent to the Malawi-Scotland Partnership (MaSP), as well as the questionnaire. MaSP distributed the questionnaire by mail and in some cases in person to the schools. In total 33 schools were asked to fill in the questionnaire. The completed questionnaires were returned by the schools to MaSP, who send it back to the International Development Team. Twenty questionnaires were returned.

A descriptive analysis of the data followed, using Microsoft excel, which are described in the Results section of chapter 5. As the number of returned questionnaires is too low to use statistical analysis this sample should not be read as a representative sample for Malawian schools or schools in developing countries. Instead, the aim was to highlight some initial themes that are important to take into account and develop further when discussing the impact of partnerships and the development of global learning.